Fly Me To The Moon Tutorial

Fly Me To The Moon is a famous tune and even the casual jazz listener would recognise the distinctive melody. Over the years it’s been covered by many well known vocalists – Frank Sinatra perhaps being the most famous.

It’s a great cocktail tune and can be played both as a ballad and at a medium swing. We will start of by creating a ballad arrangement and add in some interesting reharmonisations and passing chords. The second time through we will then up the tempo and play the tune with a swing feel.

Throughout both lessons we will be applying block chord harmony using the ‘4 way close’. Block chords are particularly useful for harmonising step wise melody lines. If you take a look through the form you can see the majority of the melody moves in steps which makes it a fantastic tune for applying this theory.

We will be using a mixture of root based and rootless voicings for the up tempo version and I would always recommend playing through a jazz standard with just the left hand voicings first so that you are familiar with the voicing shapes and sounds.